


Lord Damerel Proposes: Miss Lanyon Disposes

by Ione



Category: Venetia - Georgette Heyer
Genre: F/M, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 10:58:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5494670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ione/pseuds/Ione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There are two virgins in this room . . ."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lord Damerel Proposes: Miss Lanyon Disposes

Damerel strode to the door, and locked it. “And now, my love,” he said, returning to Venetia, “for the _fourth_ time . . . !”

He paused there, smiling down at her, a glint of intent in his eyes that she had begun to recognize. She leaned up to lay a finger to his lips. “My dearest friend—stay. I believe we are come to what has been in my heart to say these many days: my dearest dear.”

He kissed her fingertip, murmuring huskily against it, “Venetia. . .”

“Admit it,” she said, “you are seeking the perfect words. Perhaps telling over poetry from the Greeks, or Pope, or Milton.”

“Milton!” he repeated, on a soft laugh.

“I confess, I have not read him, but Aubrey has talked about ‘Lycidas’ being a great poem about love, and you _did_ just say, did you not, that you wished to marry me no matter what my sentiments may be?”

She forbore quoting back at him the rest of his words— _What I regret I can never undo, for the gods don’t annihilate space, or time, or transform such a man as I am into one worthy to be your husband_.

“I do,” he said, “but you deserve the best I can give. Better.”

“Such as a formal proposal on bended knee?” She smiled mistily up at him. “I have endured such proposals twice. Oswald’s, at least, was passionate without apology or condescension, unlike Edward’s, but I believe I’ve had a surfeit of such. What I am in want of . . .”

She pulled her finger away from his lips, and laid her hands on his chest. He took her wrists lightly in his strong fingers, not to prison them, but to touch—perhaps, she suspected, to steady them both.

She knew what she wished for next, but she must tread lightly indeed. _There are two virgins in this room,_ she thought. 

She was as new to carnal knowledge as he was to scruples in the fraught matter of love. Of all the women he had known—hundreds, he had said flippantly once—he had not respected one. Until now. Later she would spare those unknown women a sympathetic thought, for surely not all of them had been as grasping and venal as that first one, but at this moment there was no room in her mind, or heart, except for Damerel and a situation so new to him that mere minutes ago he had argued with every bit of the passion Uncle Hendred had shown against her entrusting herself to him.

 _And tomorrow morning it will be just the same, endless argumentation for my own good, unless I do something about it now,_ she thought.

“What I desire,” she said, “is another kiss. Please do not say you will only kiss me when you are, what was it you called it, jug-bitten? Ah. Badly foxed.”

“Vixen,” he said appreciatively, and when she offered her face invitingly, he crushed her to him, taking command of her lips in the most satisfactory style. She had to break for breath, but only for the barest instant, then eagerly surrendered her mouth to be ravished.

A sweet warmth kindled deep within her, leaping into a tingling flame as he pressed kisses along her jaw, then grazed the curve of her neck with his teeth.

That flame shot deep into her vitals, and a moan escaped her lips. Her head swam mostly pleasantly, but she retained enough of a hold on sanity to carry forward with her plan: as he softly kissed her eyelids, then blazed an entrancing path down the other side of her face to her neck, she began to undo the buttons of his waistcoat, one by one.

When the last loosened shank caused the waistcoat to fall open, he seemed to become aware of her motions, but she closed the distance between them, breast to breast. “More,” she breathed.

A soft laugh rumbled through his chest, sparking a tightening in her nipples as he whispered against her lips, “‘Her nimble tongue, love’s lesser lightning, played . . .’”

She stood on tiptoe and nipped his lower lip. His breath stuttered, his arms grasped her shoulders, and his thumbs caressed her collarbones above the lace neckline of her gown, then began to stroke downward over the swell of her breasts—and halted.

“Oh,” she said in disappointment. “Please don’t stop.”

“I just recollected the rest of that poem—most salutary,” he murmured sardonically. “Perhaps it is better to take it as a warning—eh? Venetia, my fair tormentor, what are you doing?”

Her fingers had loosened the ties of his shirt. She ran her fingers through the soft hair she had just discovered covering the hard muscles of his chest. “Oh, my. Is this what your orgy ladies get to see? No wonder you have no trouble finding willing—”

“My dearest and most exasperating love,” he said, once again taking her wrists in his fingers. “This has to stop. We’re both insane—”

“ _I’m_ not,” she said. “Nary a jug has bitten me.”

“We’re both tired. What we need is a night of rest. Morning will bring the cold light of rationality—”

“What it will bring,” she said, her steady gaze searching his eyes, and the conflict she saw there, “is Uncle Hendred doing what he sees as his duty, after which you will do what you perceive as your duty, and Lady Denny will no doubt find some way to remind us all of our duty because she seems to know everything that happens almost as soon as it transpires. But no one listens to me when I say I’ve had a surfeit of duty, for all the quarter century of my life.”

“Venetia . . .”

“And so, my dearest dear, if you truly love me, then _show_ me. And when my uncle—who is a reasonable man—rises tomorrow, I shall inform him what I have done, after which he must accept the inevitable, and what we shall hear next is how soon can we be married.”

It was Damerel’s turn for the searching gaze. She met it fearlessly, though her heart beat fast somewhere under her throat. “Is this . . . are you certain?”

In answer she let the pretty zephyr shawl drop to the floor. Then her trembling fingers fumbled at her bodice.

“No, not here,” he murmured, frowning at the drawing room where so recently he had been drinking himself into insensibility. “If that is truly what you want, you’ve a right to a better place than this.” 

She held out her hand. “It is. And I do indeed.” He drew her to him, and they walked up the stairs to his bedchamber. A branch of candles sat on a beautiful French bureau, a clear fire burned on the grate, and the bed had been neatly turned down. Marston was nowhere in sight.

Venetia watched Damerel cast a troubled look around, his shadow falling across the bed. To distract him from another attack of nascent conscience, she said, “I am not wearing stays, for I could not lace them myself.” She was proud of how steady her voice sounded, as she untied her sash and let spill to the floor in a silken puddle. 

“Venetia . . .” he whispered.

With a quick movement she loosened her gown and let it fall. Her chemise followed, the thin muslin floating to form a moat around her feet. She stepped delicately out of it, leaving her shoes behind—she wore nothing but her stockings.

“You are so beautiful.” Damerel’s eyes gleamed, reflecting the candle flames as he looked at her, his expression so tender and so ardent that she felt as if someone had opened her skin and filled her with sunlight and honey.

With a swift step he scooped her up, then laid her gently on the bed as he murmured in that husky, rough voice, “‘ _She's all States, and all Princes, I,_

_Nothing else is._

_Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;_

_This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy spheare._ ’”

He stretched alongside her as he gently moved a stray curl off her shoulder. She shivered, though the room was warm; it was anticipation, wonder, and a little fear.

“What little I know . . .” She did her best to smile. “They talk of duty, and how . . . this part of marriage must be endured. Can you, this first time, make it quick?”

“Oh, my love,” he said, softly caressing her eyebrows with his thumbs, then touching a finger to her lips. “That would be a crime in so many ways. We shall take as long as you like—and call a halt if you will.” He kissed her again, long, slow, and with such thoroughness that once again a most promising warmth kindled inside her.

She kissed him back, inexpertly at first, but with enough passion that his kisses became fiercer, his fingers trailing lightly over her skin, causing another shiver, but this one delicious. Then he kissed his way along the curve of her neck, pausing to dip his tongue in the hollow of her throat.

Her breath hissed in, then again as his hands touched her breasts, and his thumbs circled her nipples, which tightened in a way she had only experienced when coming out of a bath into a cold room. This feeling was altogether different, making her belly tremble—and when he bent to run his tongue in the same circle his thumbs had warmed, she spread her fingers over the counterpane.

Then, with great care, he bent to touch his lips to that aching nub—and sucked. Heat shot straight through her, to pool in her most private place. He took his time, kissing and sucking, as her fingers began to curl in the counterpane, her toes arching, and her breath to shorten.

When each breast had began to throb with delicious urgency, he kissed his way slowly down her stomach, which jumped at each shortened breath. Below—in _that_ place—she was aware of the trickle of wetness, and pressed her legs together.

Damerel murmured, “If you want me to stop, pray say so.” And when she could not get her tongue to move, he cast her a wicked look over his shoulder, and added, “Or if you want more.”

Now she could speak. _“Yes.”_

He shifted his weight to the foot of the bed. All she wore were her stockings. Moving with grave care, he slid his fingers into the top of one, and began to peel it slowly, gently, down her leg, until he pulled it free of her foot. Then he took her foot in hand and pressed a kiss to her instep as he stroked lightly over the inside of her ankle.

She shifted her leg outward a little, and he took that as permission, caressing upward past her knee until once again her breath hissed. He turned his attention to the other leg, and that stocking soon joined its mate on the floor. By then he had kicked off his shoes, and kneeling at the foot of the bed, began to run his fingers lightly up the inside of her legs, bending to place soft kisses on her calf, the inside of her knees.

She dug her fingers into the counterpane as his fingers brushed up the silken skin inside her thighs, and when she widened her legs, he placed a lingering kiss inside the hollow of one thigh, then the other.

And then . . . he pressed a long kiss to the join of her legs— _cunny_ she thought, trying out a word she had never dared to speak aloud. But she knew what it was. By now the warmth had become a beating fire of urgency. She parted her knees like the veriest wanton, and his tongue darted in, sending heat shooting upward.

“Oh,” she gasped. “Don’t stop!”

“We are just beginning,” he said on a laugh, stroking her slowly. The ready warmth began to kindle as he caressed, then slid a finger into her deepest place. Her breath shuddered, her muscles tensed, but he kept stroking, and the heat began to build again. Another finger joined the first, his thumb tracing along her folds, until once again his lips met in the most tender of places—and sucked.

Lightning shot stars behind her eyelids as pleasure wrung through her in throbbing rings. When they died away, she gave a shuddering breath, her entire body limp. “That did not hurt at all,” she murmured through smiling lips. “But stay, I know there is more.”

“Yes. And so, it’s time to see what all the clack is about,” he said, once more stretching beside her.

She lifted a hand to part his shirt, which was hanging open. He stilled as she explored the contours of his musculature, humming softly under her breath. Over, around, and down, her fingers explored, to his flat belly, and the thickened hair that vanished behind the waistband of his trousers.

He reached for the buttons to the placket, but fascinating by the sizable lump she saw straining there, she sat up, her hair loosened around her bare shoulders, and said, “May I?”

“Your every desire,” he said, “is my command.”

She tugged at the buttons, and exclaimed as outward sprang of the part of him that men made such a mystery, and polite ladies—at least in her experience—pretended was not there. She reached, and touched, marveling at the stiffness that felt very like bone, covered with satin-soft skin. She touched the tip, and saw his muscles clench.

“It hurts when I do that?” she withdrew her finger.

“No.” His voice came from deep in his chest.

“Ah,” she said, and impulse caused her to bend and press her lips to the tip.

He gave a hiss much like the one she had given, and laughed. “If you continue like that,” he said with grim humor, “this is going to go faster than I’d planned.”

“You must direct us now,” she said. “But I would only ask for the pleasure of your flesh, all of it, against mine.”

“And so shall it be.”

She delighted in observing the pull and shape of his muscles as he shrugged out of his shirt and flung it away, then slipped off his trousers and stockings to join the tangle of clothing on the floor.

When he lay beside her again, she ran both hands all along his body, caressing, rubbing her thumb over ridges and curves as she hummed softly to herself. “Oh,” she said at last on an outward sigh.

“My love?”

“I believe I begin to understand a little of what Sir Lambert hinted as we walked along Bond Street.” She paused in her ministrations—she liked the way his male member jumped and twitched in her hands when she stroked it—“I have been told all my life, and repressively, too, that there exists a vast divide between men’s pleasure and women’s duty.”

“Men hear about duty, too,” he said. “Though in a different sense. The world is filled with hypocrites.”

“Perhaps. But even in the short time I spoke with my mother, I became convinced that she had never been one for duty.”

Damerel uttered a crack of laughter, and then his breath caught when she bent to lick at the tiny gleaming drop at the eye of his prick. It tasted a little of salt, and added to the warmth she could feel still, deep inside her. “No, that she was not,” he said in that husky voice she found enchanting.

“Therefore,” she said, her eyes gleaming with fun, and nearly delirious with desire, and disbelief at the summit of happiness he had thought denied him for ever, he thought she was more beautiful in this moment than he had ever seen. “Therefore,” she said again, mock-solemn, “I am beginning to believe that pleasure is not reserved exclusively to gentlemen.”

He lifted a hand, sketching a bow. “I would be honored to prove the truth of that.”

She gave a gurgle of laughter and as he moved over her, she rolled onto her back, slipping her hands into his hair as he kissed his way lingeringly from her lips to her breasts. When she began to writhe with the rising flame of heat, he moved between her widespread knees, fitted himself to the opening of her cunny, and slowly began to slide in.

Her breath hitched—it was almost painful, but far more compellingly exquisite. She had not believed so large a member could fit within her, and yet the sensation was more like hand to well-made glove.

“Hook your feet behind my back,” he whispered.

She did so, crossing them at the ankles, and felt him slide in deeper. His hips began to move, and hers with them, a rhythm that beat around them, filling the entire world with their need.

His hand slipped below to caress the places she had no name for—and a stray wit prompted her to vow that she would learn, she would know _everything_ —impelling that upward spiral of desire, and yearning, and scintillating heat that climaxed in a cry of bliss, her head thrown back on the pillow.

A moment later he gave a great thrust and a rush of warmth filled her, then on a shaky sigh he relaxed beside her and they lay together, limbs entwined.

In the wavering candlelight she gazed into his eyes, which regarded her with a relaxed sweetness she had never seen in his face. All of a sudden he appeared very much younger, and she smiled at that thought.

He, too, watched all the minute alterations in her countenance, and when at last her smile deepened to a repressed mirth, he kissed her forehead, and murmured, “Of what are you thinking?”

“Clara Denny,” she replied.

“Clara Denny,” he repeated, and the bed shook with his silent laughter. “What, in all we have done—and I trust will do again, only more, and far better—brought _her_ to mind?”

“Oh, but you must see, it answers. In so many ways, Clara will be the perfect wife for Edward—she will even know to a nicety how to get his dreadful mother turned round her thumb, whereas Mrs. Yardley always hated the sight of me. But.” Here Venetia rose on an elbow to look earnestly into his face, her locks spilling over her shoulder to curl on his breast. “You _know_ Edward would be _just_ the sort to prate forever of wifely duty, and what it will actually mean is that she is expected do her duty while all the pleasure is reserved to him.”

“I fear I’ll sound like the worst sort of coxcomb, but that is precisely what I would expect of him.”

“Therefore,” she said with an sober air. “If it does come to pass that they will marry, I have formed what I believe is a capital plan. I shall take Clara aside, and relate to her some of what I have just learnt, that she might claim some of that pleasure for herself. For you know Lady Denny never would.”

“Then we shall have to see how much more you can learn,” he retorted with a mocking leer.

She laughed. “Astonishing! I was just thinking the very same thing!”

She fell back again, reaching for him, but paused when she saw his smile soften to a rare gravity, his eyes ablaze with tenderness. “What is it, my dearest love?” she asked.

“And so,” he cupped his hands lightly on either side of her face, “no—you must let me finish—for the fifth time, will you, my darling dear, consent to be my wife?”

“As long as we both shall live,” she said.

**Works inspired by this one:**

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